The final part of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth saga ties his two trilogies together, as Jackson reveals he will almost certainly never return to the setting.

With 'The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies', Peter Jackson has completed a second trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novels 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord Of The Rings'. But fans are wondering if he might have one more trilogy up his sleeve, as Tolkien wrote plenty more material about Middle Earth, including the novel 'The Silmarillion', short stories and more appendices and indices.

Jackson has already expanded 'The Hobbit' from a meandering little road trip into a massive battle trilogy using some of Tolkien's extra material, but the issue going forward is that the Tolkien estate owns everything that isn't contained in the 'Hobbit' or 'Rings' books, and they're apparently not happy with what Jackson did with The Hobbit.

It's been a somewhat unexpected journey for The Hobbit; controversy hit as animals were reportedly harmed during filming, fans felt physically sick due to advanced 48fps technology for its New Zealand debut, and then the reviews came out...

Suffice to say, those reviews were mixed, but that doesn't mean The Hobbit... won't prevail where it really needs to: commercially. True fans of the franchise may shudder at that notion, but Warner Bros, who ploughed a reported $600 million into this film, will be hoping to recoup that and more in ticket sales alone.

The Lord Of The Rings films opened over this same weekend in December 2001, 2002 and 2003, grossing $47.2 million, $62.0 million, and $72.6 million in their respective debut weekends. All three went on to earn over $300 million domestically. The last entry to the trilogy went on to earn $1.1 billion worldwide, InsideMovies reports.